Harmless Amusements
by JadeRabbyt
Summary: Danny takes an impromptu lesson on how to properly cavort about on roller coasters without landing on his head. Oneshot.


A/N: Written for the best purpose of 'em all: because it's cool. Inspired by an OC in the Doc Ock fanfic 'Mindless' by halley42 and thethirdtwin. That fic is posted on deviantart under both account names, shouldst thou be interested. But for now, please sit back and enjoy my own little ficlet!

Harmless Amusements

By JadeRabbyt

"Are you sure there's something out here?"

Danny shrugged. "That's what my parents say." He looked around carefully before clicking on their small flashlight. Somehow, he didn't think it would go over very well with the guards if they found two teenagers sneaking around the park at ten o'clock at night, especially since the place didn't even open again until spring.

Tucker hugged his chest, shivering in the winter air. "It's definitely creepy enough to have ghosts."

"No kidding, Tuck." Danny lowered the light, looking up at the rides and booths. The roller coasters stood out sharp and foreboding against the night, their steel struts curling into the sky and weaving about its heights before plunging down again. They stood guard over candy booths and smaller twirl-an'-puke rides, the ghosts of their shadows descending in the starlight. Inside the entrance gate, game booths stood strictly at attention alongside branching concrete paths, glaring at the two of them with metal shudders pulled.

Danny cleared his throat a little too loudly. "Uh… Let's just find this thing and get out of here."

Tucker rolled his eyes. "I thought you said this would be fun. 'Come on, Tucker, let's go catch the amusement park ghost at some unholy hour of the night!' Yeah right."

Danny, already in ghost mode, drifted forward and searched out the nearby hedges and stands with the sharp beam of his flashlight. "At least it's a change of scenery. And this whole thing is pretty cool." He laughed, shining the flashlight under his chin and making a face. "Boo!"

Tucker stared blankly at his halfa friend. "Did you just use a ghost as an excuse to mess around in an amusement park at midnight?"

Danny grinned. "Maybe."

Tucker held out a hand for a high-five, which Danny readily accepted. "Nice."

The two friends crept away from the opening gates and wandered out into the park, the fencing and turnstiles of the main gates receding behind them. The trees loomed up on either side, reaching over at them from the scattered patches of grass along the path.

They investigated the smaller rides first, Danny canvassing the area from the sky while Tucker waited below, on the lookout for activity in the underbrush. They cleared the antique carousel, the Imax movie complex, the kiddy rides, and the gaming area. Likewise the spinning rides, the plummeting rides, and the sky swings. At length, there was nothing left to search but the creeping roller coasters near the back of the park. They passed by the game booths and into the area of 'hard-core' rides, among them the giant roller coasters, and both jumped as something neither animal nor human whooped in the dark sky above.

Danny's flashlight beam shot up. "Did you hear that?"

Tucker nodded, his eyes wide. "Oh yeah." The echoing sound had come from somewhere in the tangle of coasters, as near as Tucker could tell. "I think we found it."

The flashlight revealed nothing at such a distance, and the path they followed split into three branches. The left ended at the entrance line to a wooden coaster, the Jackal, while the center path led to a slick metal orange one, called Kong. The last path led to the Goblin, its emerald track and frenetic loop-the-loops winding crazily among the other two and around about a fourth of the park. A menagerie of loops and sudden drops, bumps, and curves, it was the longest coaster for several states around.

The whooping echoed again, much clearer, and from a different angle than before. Whatever was up there was moving around a lot. "I'll take Jackal and Kong. You get the Goblin."

Tucker laughed dryly and snatched Danny's light. "Ho no. You're the ghost, so you take the Goblin. I got Jackal."

"Fine." Danny started down his path, and it occurred to both of them at roughly the same time that they'd seen this movie and that it had probably been a terrible idea to separate, especially since Danny had the only thermos. Naturally, teenage boys being what they are, they opted to proceed down their respective paths only a little more carefully than before, rather than admitting nervousness and turning back.

Danny floated up into the tangles of the Goblin, seeing nothing but struts and wires on the way up. He rose to the top, coming to rest on a platform anchored to the top of the highest rise in the coaster. Danny sat down and peered out, clutching the edge and dangling his legs over the edge. It wasn't the most efficient way to look for the ghost, but it was one of the most interesting. He'd never be able to do this if the park were open, and the view was cool in a dizzy, mildly vertiginous kind of way. The buildings and game booths sprinkled below looked like something out of a railroad model set, or a model built for destruction via Godzilla in one of those old hokey horror movies. The thought was funny, but it still made Danny squeamish. He sure _hoped_ the ghost wasn't a Godzilla-type, though if it was, you'd think he'd have—

"Hiya!"

"Ack!" The joyous shout might have been a slap in the face for all the fright it gave Danny. He jumped into the air, fists glowing with plasma, eyes darting everywhere. "Who's there?" He couldn't see anything or anyone that didn't belong. "Who's there?"

"Hopper," someone whispered from below.

Very, very carefully, Danny peered over the edge of the platform. "Who?"

A figure leaped up in front of him. "Hopper!" It shot up and over him, the moonlight dancing off his clothes as they flexed with its motion. The creature spun leisurely at the apex of its leap, basking for a moment in the sky before crashing earthward. "Wheeeeeeee!"

"Hold on!" Danny shouted. He swung himself off the platform and dove out after it, falling off the coaster and jetting down. The thing had gone into freefall. "I'll catch you!"

The figure below laughed, spinning insanely in midair. "Don't bother." It stretched out its arms or tentacles or whatever it had for limbs and caught one of the Goblin's green struts, flinging itself around the bar and releasing, rocketing back up into the sky.

"Who ARE you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm just enjoying myself." The voice drifted down faintly from above. "Are you?"

Danny couldn't say he was. This thing was freaking him out. "This is a human place. You can't be here."

"Why? Are the humans using it?"

"No, but they will."

"When?"

"In a couple months." Danny could hardly keep up with it. The ghost—he was pretty sure it was a ghost—wasn't restricting itself to the Goblin. Its acrobatic escapades stretched all over the area, from the concessions stands to the trees to the coasters. It never stood still, and it only stayed in one place long enough to gather energy or momentum to shoot off again. "Don't you ever stop moving?"

It laughed. "Not really."

"Why?"

"Because it's so much fun..." Here it grasped another wooden beam, one of the Jackal's, and flung itself out across the gap, reaching for a bar of Kong and catching it without a hair's breadth of extra space. "To move!"

Danny followed, opting to fly instead of leap. The thermos was strapped to his back, but he wasn't about to pull it out yet. Danny bit his tongue anxiously as the ghost ricocheted off a concession's roof. It was difficult to be contentious with something that jolly. "I could stop you right now," he called.

"But you won't. _He_ might," the ghost added, gesturing to the ground from atop the Kong. "But you won't."

Danny followed its motion and finally noticed Tucker, who'd obviously been trying to get his attention for some time now. The light wind made it difficult for him to hear his shouts. Danny gestured for Tucker to hang on. Tucker didn't look happy from his position down at Kong's entrance gate, but he crossed his arms and stopped shouting.

"Why—" Danny groaned as he realized the ghost had gone cavorting off again. It took him a minute to find it. "How do you know I won't catch you?"

"You're a good guy, of course."

"Thanks."

"Really, you are. You don't look like you have nearly as much fun as you might, though." It swung around a bar, shaking its head at the misguided young ghost-child.

Danny quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean? By frightening people? I don't do that stuff." Or at least, not very often.

The ghost continued shaking its head, releasing the bar and whirling off into space. "Watch me." Danny put his anxiety on hold and humored the ghost. It whooped through the sky, the humanoid form plunging through space, snatching a tree branch at the last minute, breaking the fall and landing in a crouch on the concrete. It raced along the pavement, nearly a blur, and launched itself up, grabbed one of the Jackal's struts and promptly spun and somersaulted its way to the top. It favored him with a moment of stillness, but even then the thing continued doing a little joyful jig. The silhouette showed wild hair and baggy clothing against the darker sky. "Come over here!"

Danny looked it over suspiciously before complying. He jetted over and landed at the top of the Jackal, next to the ghost—Hopper. "So that's all you do here?"

The ghost nodded, its blonde hair rustling. "That's all! No harm do I do."

"Hm." Danny looked down over the roller coasters, remembering its earlier show. He couldn't say it looked all that boring. "How do you jump around like that?"

The ghost smiled, still dancing. "It's a lot like flying, but a lot more fun. Follow me, and don't fly!" With that, it leaped of the top of the Jackal, a height well over ten stories. Danny hesitated, then plunged after it, letting the ghostly weight he never knew he had carry him earthward. The earth shot up to meet the two of them, and at the last minute Hopper shouted for him to grab something. Hopper succeeded, but Danny didn't. He fell through the earth and arose, gasping, back into the air.

"That's not fun."

"Of course it wasn't. You didn't do it right." Hopper jumped around the coasters and the stands, roughly circling Danny.

He heard feet and turned to see Tucker jogging toward him. "Hey Danny. Who's your friend?" Tucker edged farther away every time Hopper's circle brought it close to him.

"Relax, Tucker. It's not hostile."

"That I'm not," Hoper agreed, perching on a bench nearby.

Tucker glanced wistfully at Danny's thermos. "Are you sure? I'm not sure I like this one."

"How about that?" laughed the ghost. "I don't like you either."

"I'm pretty sure he's safe. I'll save you if anything weird starts to happen."

"Which should be any minute now," Tucker muttered.

Danny ignored him for the moment. "So, how would I do it 'right'?"

"Plasma boost. Boost yourself, the same way you do when you fly, only just one quick impulse. Just so you don't crash." Hopper demonstrated, jumping between struts. Danny did notice that he sped up quite a bit near the end of the jump. "See? Same effect, but no crash."

Tucker smiled. "Oh, so you're taking ghost gymnastics now?"

Danny looked critically at the tangled bars of the coasters around him. "Basically." He jumped up, practicing the boost. It worked perfectly, and he followed Hopper's lead.

The two of them swung up into the sky and among the bars, Danny trying his best to keep up. He fumbled and scrambled to catch hold of things, but after only a little practice he found he'd gotten much better. "Don't think about it," Hopper advised. "Just feel." Danny tried not to think about it, tried not to think about the spinning world and the leaping imprecisions that might pull him into a sickening drop at any moment. He kept at the game, focusing completely on the bars, on his own limitations and ectoplasmic advantages, trying for the most efficient and enjoyable maneuvers.

Danny followed Hopper all along the coasters, grasping the cold bars in his hand and whirling up into the sky again and again, the stars crashing down to greet him each time. The lights of the town flashed in the distance as he flung himself around the higher parts of the coasters, and on the inevitable descents of his jumps and leaps, the lights of the earth flashed beautifully and wildly up at him from the ground below. Danny found himself grasping instinctively at solid hand-holds he never remembered seeing, and soon he didn't need to follow Hopper. He could find his own way.

The drops with gravity and the weightless peaks of his jumps, the reversal of forces as he swung around a bar, turning a plunge into a vaulting jump—his worries, not that he'd had many to begin with, couldn't keep up with any of it. Soon he was whooping and laughing just as loudly as Hopper. The sky shone such a deep, black clear, only to be replaced in an instant with a spinning view of the glimmering town and the looming foothills behind it. A drop from the top of a coaster sent the wind crashing past his ears, a swing from a pole brought the wire-taught silence of masses in motion. Moving and feeling, not thinking, just enjoying his own plasma-enhanced dexterity and ability, Danny started to understand the attraction of the empty park.

He'd had been at it for some time when, during a downward glance to check on Tucker, he spotted the weaving beams of park security flashlights. A quick scan of the area showed Hopper to be nowhere in sight. "Bye," he called.

"See you around!" hollered a voice in the distance.

Danny dropped back to earth where Tucker was seated at a picnic bench. "Enjoy yourself?"

"The guards are here," Danny said, catching his breath.

"Nuts." Tucker grabbed the light and his backpack off the table and the two of them rushed to the fence, narrowly avoiding the shouts and searching beams of the guards. One of them caught a flash of Tucker, but Danny phased them both from sight, reappearing human and tangible on a sidewalk along a road outside the park.

Tucker smirked at Danny. "Was that as much fun as I think it was?"

Danny took a last, full look at the park before answering. "I think I might have to go back there sometime."

"Hm." Tucker pulled out his PDA, checking it for directions. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea. I mean, if nothing else, it's bad publicity."

"Oh, like the public enemy number one could ever get _good_ publicity?" Danny laughed. "We'll have to go back some time. I'll introduce you."

Tucker shook his head. "Don't bother. You go party with your little ghosty clique and I'll sit on the park benches like somebody's granddad while you have the time of your life. Lucky halfa."

Danny sighed. "Tucker…"

Tucker smiled over his shoulder. "Just kidding, sort of. Anyway, I bet I could make a killer website out of pictures of you goofing around like that. I can see it now, 'Tucker's Ghost Zone': ten dollars a pop for admission."

"That has potential." Danny joked with Tucker as they traversed the dark streets. He didn't discuss the excursion in depth, the sneaking liberating freedom it had brought him. Though Danny's talk followed Tucker's without missing a beat, though he made it home as usual without attracting much parental flak, Danny's head stayed up in the coasters, leaping fantastically from bar to towering bar as he reached after the stars.


End file.
